Jesus has told the rich young man that, to be perfect, he must do more than obey the commandments; additionally, he must give everything away and follow Jesus; he must sell it all, give the money to the poor, and pursue a life of total gratuity with Jesus [ … ]

The rich young man has recognized what Jesus has to offer him. Moved with great enthusiasm, he runs to Jesus to ask him what he must do. To this, Jesus reminds the young man of the Ten Commandments [ … ]

John tells Jesus that he and other disciples have forbidden a man from casting out devils in Jesus’ name, and Jesus tells him that he was wrong to do this. The man was doing good, irrespective of his not belonging to the community of disciples following Jesus. There is no call for exclusivity, so long as people are working faithfully for and toward the good. Jesus displays an ecumenical attitude here. Different faiths, different churches, can peacefully co-exist and work alongside each other for the greater good [ … ]

Jesus has a different way of teaching his disciples from that with which he speaks to the many. As he forms them for their apostolic work, so much of what they learn will come from being close to Jesus, living with him, sharing a way of life. We may think of a whole culture, a whole way of thinking and doing and being, being transmitted through a lived and community relationship, rather than, say, of the sort of education which divides the world up into classes and has a textbook and a teacher for each. Christ is no mere teacher in this sense: he is the Master; he is the Way [ … ]

Jesus has told his disciples for the first time that he must go to Jerusalem to suffer and die. In today’s Gospel verses, Jesus calls the multitudes also, to tell everyone about what it means to follow Jesus, to live a Christian life. While the Passion draws closer, the sign of the crucifixion looming prominently over these verses, we are enjoined in our own lives to deny ourselves and to take up our cross to follow Jesus [ … ]

Our verses begin with Jesus asking two questions. The first gives us a sense of the rumour and speculation surrounding Jesus as he preaches. The crowds see Jesus as a prophet, wondering if he might be one of the prophets returned. Jesus’ next question, ‘But whom say ye that I am?’ is a call to his disciples for faith and clarity, and Peter obliges, affirming that Jesus is the Messiah. Once more, Jesus charges his disciples to keep this knowledge secret. It is not yet time for our Lord to reveal himself, perhaps because the social situation is too dangerous, perhaps because the multitudes are not yet ready to receive such spiritual truth – we do not know [ … ]

Jesus has performed the second miracle of the loaves and fishes, following which the Pharisees have come to him, demanding to see a sign from heaven to prove that he is the Messiah. Jesus rejects and departs from the Pharisees, and now warns his disciples to be wary of them [ … ]

Jesus is saddened by the Pharisees’ heard-heartedness and their refusal to believe, despite the many and great healing miracles performed by Jesus, which all the world else is able to recognize and celebrate, filled with joy and wonder [ … ]

Today’s Bible verses are an extraordinary act of forgetting and of remembering. What do we mean by this? First off, we mean that Mark has not forgotten that he has already told us one story of Jesus feeding the multitude. To suggest otherwise than this would be absurd. We are intended to read this Gospel account of the feeding of a multitude in the light of our reading of the previous miracle of feeding. That’s part of the point [ … ]

In today’s Bible reading, we see clearly that many of those to whom Mark addresses his Gospel would not be familiar with Jewish customs. Mark, therefore, explains that the Jews wash as a ritual of purification prior to eating. This was initially a prescription for how priests should wash before offering sacrifice – see Exodus 30: 17ff – and was extended by tradition to all Jews before every meal. It may be helpful for us to remember that this was not a matter of hygiene; rather ritual purification was a symbol of the moral purity a person should have when approaching God. We may also consider our own practice of washing our hands and saying grace before meals, such that our participating in a meal becomes an act of thanksgiving to God, the meal a sacred space [ … ]

The apostles have returned exhausted and energized to Jesus. They have succeeded in their mission and they are full of the glory of what they have accomplished. They long to tell Jesus all that they have done in Jesus’ name. This is a triumph for the disciples. They long to share [ … ]

Herod the tetrarch, Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great, was a client ‘king’ of the Romans. He is highly alert to the in/stability of his region and to his own position within the Roman authority. We may imagine that the fear of a popular leader amassing a following and potentially threatening authority contributed to the arrest of John the Baptist, this in addition to the reason we are given in the Gospel, which is that John had told Herod how immoral he was being in marrying his brother’s wife Herodias [ … ]

Reading Mark’s Gospel, we have a wonderful sense of just how active and mobile Jesus’ ministry around Galilee was. The words ‘immediately’ and ‘straightway’ recur again and again. There is joy and purpose in these words. There is the sense of astonishment people experienced listening to Jesus. And there is the touch of danger, the revolutionary energy of Jesus, and the plots of his enemies [ … ]

Jesus family and friends have worried in earlier verses about Jesus’ sanity. His friends have tried to seize him, to save him from himself. Now his mother and his brothers come to find him. It seems natural to assume they are still very concerned, and that there has been what they perceive to be a breach in the family, which may be linked in some way to Jesus’ move to Capernaum [ … ]

As Jesus’ popularity grows, so too do those opposing voices ranged against him. Jesus has worked saving miracles, and now the scribes come from Jerusalem declare that this has not been holy work but rather diabolical. This sounds to modern day listeners to be absurd, although we might wonder at Jesus’ manner as he exorcised demons, and bear in mind that his friends and family thought he had lost his wits and was beside himself. Certainly, the intention of the scribes is to find fault and seize on anything they can to try to vilify Jesus. They are looking to reject the good news and are happy to pervert the truth if they feel by doing so they may harm Jesus [ … ]

There are times elsewhere in the Gospels when Jesus’ enemies accuse him of being possessed by a devil. In today’s very short Gospel reading, we listen to how Jesus’ friends are worried for him, to the point where they wish to save him from himself, thinking that he has gone out of his mind – that he is mad [ … ]

Jesus chooses his core group of disciples, the Apostles, who will live and travel with him and to whom Jesus will impart his deepest and most extensive teachings. While Jesus speaks mysteriously, in parables, to the majority of his listeners, the Apostles will be privy to the hidden meanings of his words, the parables explained, albeit they will often fail to understand or be able to accept what Jesus tells them [ … ]